Archive

Spring 2021 #OSSTA Lecture: Bomani Oseni McClendon

I’ve found that iden­ti­fy­ing ways to be a part of shared col­lab­o­ra­tive and com­mu­ni­ty projects that pro­duce knowl­edge or build infra­struc­ture that has been influ­en­tial and instruc­tive for me has con­nect­ed me to a lot of real­ly amaz­ing peo­ple and ideas. And so, most rel­e­vant to this pre­sen­ta­tion I want to talk about how my more recent work as an open source main­tain­er has actu­al­ly helped me learn more about how to be present in com­mu­ni­ties that are impor­tant to me. 

Cyborg Ecosocialism + Gendered Labor + the Green New Deal

I think it’ll prob­a­bly come as no sur­prise to any­one here that there have been ten­sions between labor and envi­ron­ment since at least the 1970s. And this is a major prob­lem we think for the cli­mate move­ment and for any sort of move­ment for a Green New Deal to solve.

From Managerial Feudalism to the Revolt of the Caring Classes

I think we need to real­ly think hard about what has been hap­pen­ing to social class rela­tions. And the con­clu­sion that I came to is that essen­tial­ly the left is apply­ing an out­dat­ed par­a­digm. You know, they’re still think­ing in terms of boss­es and work­ers and a kind of old-fashioned indus­tri­al sense. Where what’s real­ly going on is that for most peo­ple the key class oppo­si­tion is care­givers ver­sus man­agers. And essen­tial­ly, left­ist par­ties are try­ing to rep­re­sent both sides at the same time, but they’re real­ly dom­i­nat­ed by the latter.